Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery

Classical slavery provides fascinating, complex, and engaging, albeit sometimes grim, topics for the historian. Over the last generation, these have attracted the attention of many of the best minds in ancient social history. The issues involved have generated passionate debates; the challenge of the uneven evidence has elicited elegant arguments and painstaking investigations of tricky and obscure bodies of evidence. Although I have a couple of my own ideas to develop, the main aim of this book is to convey the excitement and interest of the field of ancient slavery to students of history. The topic of Greek and Roman slavery is a large one. Rather than write a long book I will be selective in my treatment. The general introduction will provide the political and historical context for Greek and Roman slavery and briefly survey the institutions themselves. Each chapter will open with a section on "Background and Methodology." These will orient the reader for the chapter's "Case Studies," one from Greece and one from Rome and sometimes a Hellenistic case that would constitute the bulk of the book. Some asymmetry will be unavoidable between the treatment of Greece and of Rome, since the questions our evidence allows us fruitfully to investigate are not the same in each case. For example, the chapter on slave families could treat slave families proper at Rome, but would have to focus on intimate slave-master relationships in Greece, since only a few passages mention slave families in classical Greece. In sum, interest will take a higher priority than coverage, although the reader should end up with a solid general knowledge of classical slavery.

Review: "Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery is one of the first overviews of the lives of slaves in Greece and Rome aimed at a more general reader [...] an excellent book to use for an undergraduate course on the ancient world, either as a main text or as an adjunct to a more traditional textbook that focuses on the traditional narratives of these societies." - Christian Perring, PhD, Editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews "Hunt delivers an introduction to classical slavery that will appeal to a wide range of readers. The book will function equally well as a textbook in courses on ancient slavery, social history, or comparative slavery, and as a reference work for historians working on slavery in other periods. It is difficult to produce a text that serves the needs of these distinct audiences, but Hunt does so successfully by using case studies that guide the reader through the methodology of studying ancient slavery. [...] The greatest compliment that I can pay Hunt is that he has convinced me that a thematic approach [for my course], using his text, will be much more interesting. - Katharine P.D. Huemoeller, University of British Columbia for Bryn Mawr Classical Review "In this wide-ranging and thorough book, Hunt navigates complex and partial sources with great skill to produce a comprehensive account of how slavery operated, varied and changed throughout the ancient world [...] Within each of these topics, Hunt is careful to present contrasting scholarly views of the evidence. [...] [The book's] treatment of a huge subject is serious and well balanced, and also well written, an easy read. Highly recommended." -Colin McDonald for Classics for All